Putney Vale Cemetery, London

History

At the start of the Victorian period, seven great
cemeteries were planned in different parts of London. The "magnificent
seven" were: Kensal Green
(1833), West Norwood (1836), Highgate (1839),
Abney Park (1840), Brompton and
Nunhead (both 1840), and Tower Hamlets
(1841). But London continued to expand. When London County Council was
established in 1888, the borough councils took on the responsibility
of meeting the increased demand for burials. The Borough of Wandsworth
duly acquired farmland, and its Borough Council Surveyor laid out
Putney Vale Cemetery there in 1887. He designed two chapels for it,
one for the Church of England, and one for other denominations (or
none). He also designed a cemetery lodge. The firm of J. Melady &
Sons, from nearby Barnes, did the planting. The cemetery opened in
1891, and needed extending in 1909 and 1912. In 1938, one of the
chapels was converted to a crematorium by E. J. Elford. The
crematorium part is at the back of the chapel, in the guise of a
tower. Elford also designed a Garden of Remembrance, laid out around
the same time.

The cemetery is known for its "good range of turn-of-the-century
monuments (many featuring Edwardian ladies in attitudes of mourning)
and two especially fine mausolea" (Curl 166). The latter both date
from 1910. One, Ionic in style, was built for Edwin Tate (1847-1928),
son of the Victorian sugar magnate Henry Tate. It seems curious that
it was built years before he died, but the brief listed buildings text
dates it even further back, calling it "late 19c." Perhaps it was
originally built for the children he had lost (see peerage records).
The other mausoleum, referred to by James Stevens Curl as "a powerful
in antis Egyptianising job with palm-leaf capitals" (166),
was for Alexander Gordon (c.1841-1910), of a large American
manufacturing concern, Niles Tool Works. These and a third mausoleum
with Doric pilasters, for the prominent Sainsbury family and dating
from 1900, are all Grade II listed buildings. Among the
many well-known people laid to rest at Putney Vale are Dickens's eighth child,
Henry Fielding Dickens (1849-1933), who became a distinguished lawyer,
and the sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). — Jacqueline Banerjee